Note 31 — Chapter XI

Hoffman was for several years a member of the Prussian Diet and prominent in the councils of the Social-Democratic party. Although a professed atheist and unable to write a sentence of his mother-tongue without an error in spelling or grammar, he became under the first revolutionary government Prussian Minister of Education (Kultusminister), with charge over the church and schools. Hoffman left the old party at the time of the split in 1915, and has since been an abusive and virulent enemy of his former colleagues. He distinguished himself in the Diet chiefly by disregard of the ordinary amenities of civilized intercourse and parliamentary forms. Speaking from the speaker's rostrum in the Diet, with his back to the presiding-officer—after the usual European custom—he would utter some insult to the royal house, the authorities in general, one of the bourgeois parties of the house or one of the members. He appeared to know instinctively whenever his remarks were inadmissible, for he would pause, hunch up his shoulders like one expecting to be struck from behind, and wait for the presiding-officer to ring his bell and call him to order. A few minutes later the same scene would be reënacted.